Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  I made my way into the tidy kitchen, where a pot of fish stew was indeed simmering on the hob. There wasn’t much furniture beyond a table full of carrots and turnips in various stages of preparation. Brix was still in my robe, drying her hair in front of the fire, bent over at the waist.

  Not my girl. I wasn’t even sure she was my friend, at the moment.

  I knocked on the door jamb. ‘Can I come in?’

  She straightened, flipping her hair backwards. ‘Aren’t you already in?’

  I pulled the door shut behind me, but didn’t advance towards her. I couldn’t figure out how to begin. She watched me, thoughtful.

  ‘What is it?’ Her tone had a familiar edge in it. I had just been doing the same thing with my own voice when I was talking to Lorican, trying to sound at ease and unafraid. I wondered if I’d failed this utterly.

  ‘Last night, when I had to write the ley-breaker.’ There was probably some delicate way to say this, but I couldn’t find it. ‘There was – I had to scribe it near your throat. I promise I wasn’t looking, wasn’t being – I wasn’t—’ What was it about talking to her that made me sound so damn unconvincing? I closed my eyes briefly. ‘Your ink.’ The words spilled out all in a rush. ‘A binding spell and speakfar, from what I saw. They’re tattooed on to you, and you’re not debilitated by them, so that has to mean that you’re Tirnaal. Doesn’t it?’

  The silence changed. It almost hummed. Brix was looking at me as though she could see through to the wall behind me. ‘I don’t think you know what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’ve heard that Tirnaal carry magic, but they don’t use it,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why. But I know that when I cast and you’ve been touching me, the magic behaves differently – the effects are accelerated, and stronger. I know Tirnaal don’t sicken from magic, or at least that’s what the rumours say. And I know that some wizards buy Tirnaal slaves and use them, somehow, to absorb the toxicity of their spells.’

  ‘And do you know what that feels like?’ She didn’t raise her voice. It would have been more reassuring if she did. ‘To have someone pour all their poison into you? The Guild slavers snatched us, my baby sister and me, in the street outside our house, right in the city. They did that when I was thirteen, wizard. Stolen from our mother to be tools. Not even livestock, or pets. They didn’t care that what they did was illegal, didn’t even think of us like we were alive, just used us so they could keep doing their spells without having to pay the consequences. It hurts. We lose ourselves. Do you know about that?’

  My eyes stung. I shook my head. So that was why she needed the money, that was who she had to meet up with. A sister, stuck in a Guildhouse somewhere, drowning in poison and pain. Nausea clawed at my stomach, and for once it had nothing to do with my magic hangover.

  ‘Brix,’ I said, carefully, ‘I’m not going to—’

  ‘What?’ She spoke between her teeth. ‘Tattoo binding spells on my skin to keep me tied to a prison? Use me so you can keep practising magic without having seizures? Dump sleeping powder in my soup and sell me to Temples for them to use?’

  ‘—touch you,’ I said. ‘Ever again. You won’t have to have anything to do with my spells. I’m sorry I didn’t know what was happening before. And I’ll find a way to get you the money I owe if it kills me. I promise.’

  She stared into the fire, blinking hard. After a moment she let out her breath, walked past me and put a carving knife on the table, next to the turnips.

  ‘Great Farran.’ I leaned on the table, my knees abruptly wobbly. ‘Great dancing Farran, you were going to stab me.’

  She went to the hearth and took a pottery bowl off the mantel shelf. ‘Do you think you want to eat?’

  I thought we had a number of things left to discuss. ‘You were going to stab me,’ I repeated.

  ‘I don’t know what I was going to do.’ She sounded unsteady. ‘I didn’t expect—’ She filled the bowl with quick, irritated motions and plopped it on the table. ‘Eat, wizard.’

  ‘Dammit, that isn’t my name.’ I shoved the bowl towards her. ‘And you’re not a servant. I can get my own stupid breakfast.’

  She finally met my eyes, searching. After a long moment, the line of her shoulders relaxed a little. ‘Corcoran, then,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Gray,’ I said, ‘unless you’re just insulting me on purpose, now.’

  Her mouth softened. I think she would have smiled if Lorican hadn’t come banging through the door at that moment as though the hells were behind him.

  ‘Out the back,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  *

  The pair of Guildmasters had evidently come into the pub with a bounty sheet and threats thinly veiled as apologies. According to them, their apprentices had spotted a dangerous fugitive and unwisely confronted him. There had been a sorcerous explosion and they had members asking about it at every tavern. If the unlicensed wizard who’d caused the explosion was alive, he was a serious threat. If he had blown himself up, they insisted the corpse could still be a threat, leaking magical toxicity. The Guildmasters had explained, smoothly, that they were worried about Lorican’s safety.

  ‘So I told them that I was just as happy to not serve any stinking spelldogs at all,’ Lorican said, hustling us down the fourth alley since leaving the tavern, ‘and that if they wanted my help finding corpses that probably didn’t even exist that they’d have to pay me for their apprentices’ bad behaviour.’ He snorted. ‘They tightened right up when I mentioned money. Wizards always think they’re the only skull in the room that isn’t empty.’

  Which probably wasn’t meant as a poke at me, but still felt like one. He had us trotting down side streets and around corners too quickly. Things were out of control. ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The temple of Jaern. Isn’t that what you said Acarius wanted?’ Lorican pulled us down a lane that I had mistaken for a crack between two buildings, half-jogging.

  We were strung out in an awkward line with Brix behind me. I was having a difficult time keeping up with him on the slippery cobbles, and shivers of unease kept crawling up my body.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  ‘The spelldogs aren’t going to actually go away, brat,’ Lorican said, without looking back at me. ‘They’re going to go find my landlord in the Spires and get permission, and then they’ll go through the alley looking for your bones whether I say they can or not.’

  I halted. ‘I know, but just wait, dammit.’ The claustrophobic closeness of the houses rising on either side of me was making my head spin. I put a hand on one of the flaking blue plaster walls and threw my weight on to my good knee. ‘Just let me think. If the Guild knows I’m in town, and there are thirty-five of them, then sauntering into Temples in broad daylight is stupid. They were working with the priests in Fenwydd – they could be here, too.’

  Lorican shifted from foot to foot as thought the cobbles were burning him. ‘You said the temple of Jaern, Acarius’ temple.’

  I felt like there were eyes on me, with as much nervous clarity as a bird being stalked by a fox. Almost worse was the nagging sense, at the back of my mind, that I should have known what it meant. I had spent the last twenty minutes purposely lingering at corners, looking for pursuit. There was nobody following me but Brix, and she was focused on keeping up with Lorican and not wasting much attention on me. Feeling like you were observed without anybody actually observing you was a symptom. I should have known what it indicated.

  I pressed my knuckles against one eyebrow, trying to force myself into coherence. ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s not at Temples square. There isn’t a normal temple of Jaern here, just the old one.’ Lorican frowned. ‘Didn’t Acarius tell you?’

  He hadn’t, of course. Acarius not telling me things was a pattern. But this seemed wrong, charging blindly through the streets on the word of a man that I’d only met a few hours ago.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brix edge towards me. ‘Gray, what’s wrong?’
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  I glanced upwards, but there were no windows, nobody peering down at us from the roofs of the houses. Indeed, the walls leaned towards each other so steeply that the thin, pale line of sky was barely visible between their ragged eaves. I still felt like someone was staring at me. ‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

  Lorican led us through more backstreets than I had known existed in any city. At first I thought the turns were random, meant to confuse pursuit. Then I realised we were heading steadily uphill, towards the Spires. Soon the cobbles changed from white to a dirty grey – they had probably been black at one time, expensive stone that had to be hauled from far away. The houses changed, too, growing grander – no more flaking plaster. These had extra storeys, scrollwork under the eaves and eventually, when we were close to the Spires, gilding around the doors.

  The inner wall stretched above us, topped with black, carved spikes that soared upwards, capped in sparkling brass. After a long time weaving our way along it, Lorican came to a halt and motioned for me and Brix to stay where we were, crouched in the narrow space between a house and the warm black rock. He inched forwards along the building, towards the street it faced. He only stayed at the opening for a moment before ducking back.

  ‘Hells,’ he whispered, crouching beside me. He jerked his chin at the place he’d just vacated. ‘Where did they come from?’

  I eased myself past him to peer cautiously out at the street, which ran up to a bronze-bound gate. The gate was engraved with rose vines, their spiny thorns as thick as my thumb, and it was open, as it probably had been since the king’s ancestors had broken Ri Dana’s fortifications and driven the Daine out of Varre. Three Guild wizards stood, chatting easily with each other, inside the boundary that separated the rabble from the Spires.

  A fourth wizard was silent, leaning a black-robed shoulder against the gate and staring out at the genteel crowd flowing in and out of the shops that lined the road. Keir Esras was apparently not one for chat.

  ‘It’s about damn time,’ one of the wizards was saying. ‘The king can’t even read. Some regulations are necessary, everybody agrees with that, but limiting research so severely is just pure superstition. Next they’ll be insisting that magic happens because we drink the blood of babies.’

  ‘Shh.’ The wizard standing next to her, a short man with an inadequate scruff of beard, shifted uncomfortably. ‘It isn’t that I don’t agree, but we’re on the street, and technically – I mean, if anybody heard you—’

  ‘Technically.’ The female wizard spat down on to the cobblestones. ‘I’m tired of being afraid of technicalities. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, or I’d still be at the Guildhouse with the rest of the Charter-loving sheep,’ the bearded one growled. ‘But until we’re in a more secure position—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Keir said, without moving. ‘Be observant, be quiet and wait.’ He never turned his head, his attention focused on the street that led to the gate. ‘They’ll be here, soon enough.’

  I worked my way hurriedly backwards. That was why I had felt watched.

  ‘They’ve been divining for me,’ I whispered. ‘I should have known.’ Acarius’ voice echoed in my head, scolding me for not paying more attention during lessons. I hate divining. It’s maddeningly vague, unless you know enough that you don’t have to ask the questions in the first place . . . and it has an effect on your subject, who, over time, can begin to feel you searching for them. How had Keir managed this kind of precision? And, gods help us, what did they mean, a more secure position ? I couldn’t imagine the Guild leadership risking its position over something as uncertain as open revolt against the king. Keir himself, though . . .

  ‘They know we’re here?’ Lorican’s body went tense, poised to flee.

  ‘No, divining doesn’t work that way. They probably know which direction we were going – uphill, so the Spires. But if that’s the only way through the wall, simple enough to wait for us.’ Even so, the Guild shouldn’t have been this close on my heels. I’d kept ahead of them for six months, so how had their divining technique suddenly got better? I watched the bartender, who was dragging the back of his hand along his forehead, wiping away sweat. How was I going to be able to tell if he was leading me into Keir’s arms? ‘Lorican, I can’t deal with four of them, not by myself. Those are senior wizards and the gods-damned Examiner General. Is there any other way to get into the Spires?’

  ‘We don’t have to get into the Spires,’ Lorican said, squeezing past Brix and me. ‘There’s another way down, it’s just less convenient. Come on.’

  Down? I had questions, but there was no time to ask them. He was moving again, Brix at his heels. I had to bring up the rear as we crept along the sweeping, salt-stained curve of dark stone, away from the sea and towards the centre of the city. None of the buildings actually touched the wall, although some came close.

  After ten minutes Lorican stopped beside a squat blackstone building that had probably at one time been a Daine gatehouse or tax office. Its windows were gaping holes, and the whole thing looked like a property that a Spires landlord had simply forgot he owned. Lorican rapped four times on the barred door.

  The door swung open. Beyond it yawned darkness. Lorican extended a hand. ‘After you, wizard.’

  ‘After me to where?’ I said.

  ‘Deeptown,’ Lorican said. ‘Where else?’

  Every instinct I had was screaming at me not to step where I couldn’t see. But I knew the menace behind me, and whatever was in front of me couldn’t be as dangerous as Keir Esras when he thought the throne was within reach.

  I took a breath, and walked into the dark.

  Nine

  As soon as Lorican and Brix had entered, the door shut and blackness enveloped us.

  ‘Don’t move,’ whispered Lorican.

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘You’re being examined,’ he said. ‘If you go moving at the wrong time, someone’s liable to put a dart in your eye.’

  I stood stock still, listening and sniffing the dead, dusty air. ‘How can anyone see me well enough to do that?’

  Out of the darkness to my left something glimmered green. As I watched, it grew to a flame, lighting up the seamed features of the oldest woman I had ever seen. Her eyes were milky with cataracts, startling in her dark-skinned face. The green fire burned on the end of her extended little finger, as though it was a candle.

  ‘Lorican,’ she said, ‘what do you think you’re doing here? The wizards have been harassing the whole town, the militia is hunting priest-killers and you decide now is the moment for a visit home?’

  ‘Paying a blood debt, Lady Mother.’ Lorican sounded strained. ‘Nothing else I could do. I’ve taken every precaution I can think of. This one needs to go to the old temple, and I’ve promised to take him. I couldn’t bring him through the door in the Spires. It’s being watched.’

  She gave a short grunt of acknowledgement. ‘That seems very foolish, given what happened to you last year. You’re prepared to do what you have to, if your precautions aren’t enough?’

  There was a short silence, then Lorican spoke again. ‘Yes.’

  The hair rose on the backs of my arms. ‘What is she asking you to promise?’

  ‘Keep your tongue between your teeth,’ Lorican hissed.

  There was a rustle of fabric and a soft jingle. She was either standing or walking. The green flame huffed out. ‘Take them down then, Lorican.’

  A click. Someone opened a door ahead of us, letting a flickering light into the space. Lorican pushed past me, catching hold of my wrist and leading me like a blind man.

  ‘Take hold of your girl,’ he said. ‘It gets a bit dodgy, here.’

  I hesitated, glancing back at Brix, but her hand was already brushing my sleeve.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, quietly, using her grip on my shirt to pull herself closer to me. ‘You’re not casting right now, and anyway, it has to be skin to skin for it to matter.’

  A trap
door opened on to a narrow set of stairs that led downwards. After a while the surface beneath my boots changed from wood to slick rock. Whoever was carrying the lantern walked ahead of Lorican, and I couldn’t see them. Just enough light bounced off the walls around me to reveal them as progressively more ancient stonework. We passed a set of leering gargoyles and what must have once been part of a roof or wall.

  ‘Where in the hells are we going?’ I said to Lorican. When Acarius had talked about a god’s artefact, I had pictured a set of ruins in the fens, or possibly a neglected building in Ri Dana itself. But this wasn’t anything so straightforward. Why did the Erranter in Ri Dana have a tunnel under the city? In fact, why was there even a clan based here? Erranter were nomadic by religious imperative, embracing the holiness of change.

  He didn’t turn, which was probably a wise decision given the speed with which we were descending.

  ‘Under the city,’ he said. ‘Deeptown and the temple of Jaern, just like you asked. I haven’t seen one of the Mothers come herself to guard an entrance in . . . ever. That Guild hunt must be causing problems. You and I are going to have a talk when we stop, brat.’

  The tunnel wound on, the steep slope beneath our feet eventually flattening out. The walls, which had initially been so close as to be claustrophobic, widened into a small cavern, still only lit by the bobbing lamp ahead of us.

  ‘What did you promise her?’ I said.

  ‘Erranter don’t like strangers. They barely tolerate me, and I’m their blood. Or I’m close enough, anyway.’ Something strange hummed in his voice. ‘The old temple doesn’t exactly have a reputation for safety. She was asking me to promise to kill you if you turn out to be a risk for the clan.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘You’re not going to risk them, so I won’t have to kill you.’ His teeth gleamed in the dark. ‘Right?’

  Finally, the rocks changed. We passed through an archway and stood, blinking, in the midnight kingdom of Deeptown.

  It looked like nothing so much as the inside of a castle, a great hall with its windows bricked over. The walls soared away from us into blackness, both above and to each side. Here and there braziers burned like lonely stars, and by their light I saw the village.